Piaggio based in Pontedera, Italy encompasses seven brands of scooters and motorcycles. As the fourth largest producer of scooters and motorcycles in the world, Piaggio produces more than 600,000 vehicles annually, with five research and development centers, more than 6,700 employees and operations in over 50 countries.

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Founded by Rinaldo Piaggio in 1884, Piaggio initially produced locomotives and railway carriages. During World War I the company focused on producing aircraft.

During World War II the company produced bomber aircraft, but Piaggio emerged from the conflict with its Pontedera plant completely demolished by Allied bombing. Italy's crippled economy and the disastrous state of the roads did not assist in the redevelopment of the automobile markets. Enrico Piaggio, the son of Piaggio's founder Rinaldo Piaggio, decided to leave the aeronautical field in order to address Italy's urgent need for a modern and affordable mode of transportation. The idea was to design an inexpensive vehicle for the masses.

Aeronautical engineer Corradino D'Ascanio, responsible for the design and construction of the first modern helicopter by Agusta, was asked by Enrico Piaggio to create a simple, robust and affordable vehicle. The vehicle had to be easy to drive for both men and women, be able to carry a passenger, and not get its driver's clothes dirty. In 1946 Piaggio launched the legendary Vespa scooter (Italian for "wasp") and within ten years over a million units had been produced. The Italian language gained a new word, "vespare", meaning to go somewhere on a Vespa.

With strong cash flow emanating from the success of the Vespa, Piaggio developed other products, including the 1957 Vespa 400, a tiny passenger car.

In 1959, Piaggio came under the control of the Agnelli family, the owners of car maker Fiat SpA. Resultantly, as the wider ownership of Fiat in Italian industry, in the 1964 the two divisions (aeronautical and motorcycle) split to become two independent companies; the aeronautical division was named IAM Rinaldo Piaggio. Today the aircraft-company Piaggio Aero is controlled by the family of Piero Ferrari, who also still holds 10% of the famous car maker Ferrari.

In 1959, Piaggio came under the control of the Agnelli family, the owners of car maker Fiat SpA. Vespa thrived, until 1992, when Giovanni Alberto Agnelli became CEO, but Agnelli was already suffering from cancer and died in 1997. In 1999 Morgan Grenfell Private Equity acquired Piaggio, but a quickly hoped-for sale was dashed by a failed joint venture in China. In Italy, Piaggio invested 15 million euros ($19.4 million) in a new motorcycle but dropped it after building a prototype. By the end of 2002, the company had run up 577 million euros in debt on revenues of 945 million euros, and booked a loss of 129 million euros.

Then came Roberto Colaninno: A lot of people told me I was crazy. Piaggio wasn't dying. It just needed to be treated better. Piaggio's financial position was in a bad shape, but its brand was still well known and its products were featured in many Hollywood films thanks to the Vespa ET4. In 1995, Colaninno had pulled off Europe's then largest-ever hostile takeover when he took control of Telecom Italia SpA. In October 2003, Colaninno made an initial investment of 100 million euros through his holding company Immsi SpA in exchange for just under a third of Piaggio and the mandate to run it. Chief executive Rocco Sabelli redesigned the factory on Japanese principles, and changed it so that every Piaggio scooter could be made on any assembly line.

Unlike the turnaround recipe applied at U.S. auto makers, Mr. Colaninno did not fire a single worker – a move which helped seduce the company's sceptical unions. "Everyone in a company is part of the value chain," said Colaninno. All bonuses for blue-collar workers and management were based on the same criteria: profit margins and customer satisfaction. Air conditioning was installed in the factory for the first time, increasing productivity. He also gave the company's engineers, who had been idled by the company's financial crisis, deadlines for projects. They rolled out two world firsts in 2004: a gas-electric hybrid scooter and a sophisticated tilting scooter with two wheels in front and one in back to grip the road better.

One of Piaggio's problems Mr. Colaninno couldn't fix from the inside was its scale. Even though Piaggio was the European market leader, it was dwarfed by rivals Honda and Yamaha. A year after restoring Piaggio's health, Colaninno directed Piaggio's takeover of the Italian scooter and motorcycle manufacturer Aprilia, and with it the Aprilia-owned Moto Guzzi, storied Italian manufacturer of motorcycles.

In 2006, Piaggio floated on the Milan Stock Exchange, becoming a Public Company.

In April 2006, the Abu Dhabi-based Mubadala Development, a principal investment company owned by the Government of Abu Dhabi, has acquired a 35 per cent of the equity of Piaggio Aero in order to fund new jet development.[2]

The new plug-in hybrid version of the Piaggio MP3 will be equipped with a 125 cc petrol engine and electric motor, which offers about 141 mpg-US (1.67 L/100 km/169 mpg-imp) and travels 13 miles (21 km) using battery power alone. This machine could be out in 2009.[3]

Piaggio/Vespa is also developing hybrid electric scooters. There are two models in the works, based on the popular Vespa LX 50 and the beefier Piaggio X8 125.[4]